Did you play DayZ before it was cool? I did. I spent two hours getting it to work and a further six hours wandering around aimlessly before it clicked and I had fun, because that’s the kind of trendsetting cool guy that I am. But I understand if you’re waiting for the standalone release, that maybe makes it more functional and accessible. We can’t all be a cool person like me.

Unfortunately you might still have a while to wait, as lead developer Dean Hall outlines the remaining progress required on the game before you can get your bandwagon-jumping not-a-cool-person sticky fingers on it.
DayZ was spotted in the Steam database two weeks ago, sparking rumours that it was going to appear in Early Access imminently. Hall took to Reddit to address their progress, and it seems optimization is the big challenge for the team.

Optimizing/Bugfixing Dedicated server.This is why we are not out. We need performance

We think we need a minimum of 15 FPS will 50 players, 2000 zombies, and 25000 loot items. Our latest tests have all shown some runaway systems in the code we have to tidy up. The variable synchronization system that was developed for work with the network bubble, is checking the variables very often. We’re optimizing this. Also, there are many string comparisons. These have been refactored so references are used (lookup numbers) to speed up the process. things like animations etc… are generally recorded as strings – ArmA wasn’t build to handle very large numbers of things so this has been a large area of optimization.

Which still, to my mind, makes it sound as if they’re on the last, long straight towards getting a version of the game out. In the meantime, why not go back and read cool guy Jim’s tales of survival in the original mod?

So it turns out that the engine they were using before going stand-alone was not just a sack full of limitations, but a robust framework with optimized rendering, physics and game logic? Who’d see that coming, really..

I played the original DayZ for a short while, liked the idea, hated the experience. Now I find my needs for a hide, scavenge and fight game are pretty much met by Sir, You Are Being Hunted. JR and chums have done a fine job with the robot AI, they’re almost as big a bunch of arseholes as human players in DayZ were/are. But at least they’re amusing, pipe-smoking arseholes who show suitable appreciation for quality English drizzle so it’s almost a pleasure to be shot in the back by them. DayZ had its chance to take the lead in this type of game but pretty much blew it and I doubt that they’ll be able to pull off anything special with the reboot.

No way. Duke Nukem Forever didn’t flop despite it taking a billion years to be completed, plus it was utter crap when it finally was. That War Z or whatever its called now seems to be selling ok also despite its appalling media coverage. People love to be good consumers! And more so it seems when the product features zombies.

Not really, arma 2 co was in the steam top seller list for a long while and Bohemia interactive got massive exposure, All of this before stand alone was even announced. The game still has a die hard fans and has been able to support several separate mods and still have a large player base. not to mention several new games heavily inspired by dayz.

It might not be as ginormous as it could of been if they’d released a quick version. But I think it will be plenty successful. And a quick version would of been a buggy, hacked mess. They would of then been criticized cash-grabbing and having rushed it out the door, and that they missed their opportunity to do it right.

It’s looked at as an innovative multiplayer experience that defined the zombie genre in gaming. I largely disagree with both those points (particularly the former), but cannot deny it appealed to a great many people.

If they pull off a decently-performing, non-buggy, non-hackable version, it’ll could still develop a large playerbase.

The hype has been over for a long time now. Hall and his minions missed the opportunity to create a unique, relevant experience for the gaming community. The mod was/is still great and opened a huge window into the sandbox-gaming philosophy for the average gamer and this is what he should get merits for.

I´m hosting a dedicated server with 4 DayZ instances (www.dayzjarhead.de… shameless, as I am) and they are populated very low with peaks here and now. The orginal idea of DayZ was wiped away by mods of the mods dumbing down the game to a really mind boggling level, like Overwatch or Breakingpoint did. Some devs even took the idea of DayZ and streamlined it into their own mods, being closed in into their own server-infratructure. The orginal DayZ is dwindling…

I personally enjoy playing some hardcore DayZ on my own server, ephasis on survival, with no weapon to be found under every single rock and a repaired car sitting around every corner. We play together as a group of 3-4 people and when the occasional visitor logs on the our server, we all go red alert and get spooked our by every movement in the woods. Thats what makes it unique.

That’s one of the main reasons why I stopped playing the mod. It’s damn difficult to find a place where you isn’t decked out to the max with guns, ammo and food to last you ten lifetimes. And that’s at spawn. You find a shitload more as soon as you enter the first building.

Thats one of the mods, that the devs only host on their own servers… which makes me suspicious about what their intentions are. I played DayZero quite a while and still I got shot in the face for nothing, having zero gear, because a stupid douche was playing deathmatch. Repeatedly.

Which is of cause not the dev´s fault… but it´s the reason why I enjoy playing on our own private hives with only 5 players on the server.

I feel kinda silly to actually have thought about how uncool I’ll be for waiting the standalone version instead of having played it when I first heard about it and no video game site was talking about it. My fear is that I’ll hop online and there’ll be these rugged veterans leaving me out of all the cool stuff coz I’m a standaloner (that’s how they’ll call people who started playing the new version) and thus a n00b, the worst thing anyone can be.

We were all DayZ n00bs once. Then we survived a night in almost complete darkness (well complete darkness but you learn to appreciate the outlines in the distance and the few visible stars in cloudy conditions, if nothing else about nighttime in DayZ).

Oh no I’ve just realised I will play this game with Oculus Rift some time. I think I might just pass on that particular experience, although… no, must resist urge to put self through that, I’ve already experienced actual trembling during regular DayZ.

So does this mean that Hall and co are optimising the Arma 3 engine? If so, would they perhaps mind releasing this to the current Arma 3 build?

Arma 3 doesn’t seem to handle large numbers of AI very well at all which is a pity because it is so excellently featured with tanks, helicopters, artillery and infantry to provide a full scale warfare simulator. Just the only times I’ve tried that in editor the framerate tanks long before I get to the number of units I’d want for such a battle.

As for missing the boat on this, I’m wondering: “Has DayZ made more than 50% of the money it will ever make?”. It evidently made a lot of money because Hall climbed Everest earlier this year and one presumably doesn’t afford that on the average netcode developer wage (I think it costs in the tens of thousands of USD depending on which guiding company and how many tanks of oxygen you get). So Bohemia Interactive must have loved their game selling bucket loads more than originally expected, plus boosting the community with people like me who’ve gotten into Arma 3 following positive experiences with DayZ and Arma 2. I’m glad to see that they seem to have done the fair thing and shared a portion of that windfall with the man who enabled it.

I reckon DayZ SA will still sell well, because the original was set in Chernarus. This South African zombie mod wil presumably be quite refreshing, I’m expecting lions. (/joke).

People, this is Server FPS, as in the number of updates per second the server makes. Minecraft runs at 20 FPS serverside, and 15 is actually quite high for an MMO. The display frames will be about 60+ by rig. PC Gamer just shot themselves in the foot for taking this exact statement out context.